Fastr – a simple, elegant & fast WordPress theme

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3 min read

I use WordPress on many of my sites and love its flexibility and extensibility. A new blogging platform called Ghost came into existence lately. But WordPress remains my first choice mostly because WordPress is more than just a blogging platform.

However, I was quite impressed with the simple and minimal design of Ghost blogs and their focus on blog content. Instead of trying to find a WordPress theme similar to Ghost’s default theme Casper, I decided to make one of my own. And thus Fastr was born.

Apart from keeping the design simple and minimalistic, one of the primary focus of Fastr WordPress theme is to minimize the unnecessary usage of javascript libraries, css template, background images, styling images etc. etc. which bloats the website size and increases the number of requests that go back to the server while downloading a page.

I wrote minimal CSS from scratch for layout as well as responsiveness. I stayed away from including additional CSS, javascripts and images. I also avoided loading any extra fonts by using the built in serif and sans-serif fonts of browser.

Result?

An ultra-light, yet responsive and elegant looking blogging WordPress Theme.

Checking the Demo site of Fastr with GTmetrix results in the following:

GTMetrix-Fastr-theme

With total page size of just 16.3 KB and only 4 total requests, Fastr manages to score 95%+ on both Page Speed Grade and YSlow Grade.

But is it usable?

Fastr cuts its fat in more than one way. Very light support for Menus and Widgets is one of them. But people looking for themes suitable just for blogging (like the Ghost blogging platform promises) have absolutely no need of 5 level mega drop down menus, 25+ extra sidebar widgets, funky sliders and effects and everything else that make a theme bulky.

Fastr promises to be just a blogging theme for you, and that too a very light one (even lighter than the default Ghost theme). It’s perfect for those who want to do just blogging and don’t have any need of sidebars, extra widgets and large drop down menus. A customizable footer is included in Fastr, but it’s mostly suited for “Search” widget and for inserting ads.

Check a Live Demo.

Fastr-Screenshot

How to get?

Few days back, Theme Reviewers at WordPress.org approved my theme Fastr to be included in wordpress theme directory. As of now, it has already been downloaded more than 1200 times and a simple google search for “Fastr by Kanishk” reveals that it’s live on many websites. This theme, like WordPress, is licensed under the GPL and anyone is free to do any modification to it.

Fastr is also available on GitHub for you to fork and build upon.